My Mac Mini has a setting in the Energy Saver category called Wake for Ethernet network access.

Now the way I read this option is that any network access to the Mac whilst it is asleep will wake it up, but it doesn't.

I have read that I have to send it the magic packet to wake it up, but what I really want to do is be able to simply attempt to access the Mini over the network and it wake up on demand without sending a magic packet.

4 Answers
4

It does not have option to wake computer without sending magic packet. If that was possible, each packet that arrives would wake it up. And you would be surprised how many packets can come to any port that is alive.

Wake on Demand works by partnering with a service running on your AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule called Bonjour Sleep Proxy. When Wake on Demand is enabled, any Mac on your network running Snow Leopard will automatically register itself and its shared items with the Bonjour Sleep Proxy. When a request is made to access a shared item on a Mac running Snow Leopard, the Bonjour Sleep Proxy asks that Mac to wake and handle the request. Once that request is complete, the Mac will go back to sleep at its regularly-scheduled interval as set in the Computer Sleep section of the Energy Saver preferences pane.

Apple's implementation will probably also just make the router quickly send the magic packet when it finds that some computer is trying to connect to iTunes, a printer, SSH, files or your screen, or is trying to use Back to My Mac.

You can still wake your mac(any model post 2004 or so) by sending a magic packet. The new bonjour proxy service is just a way for your snow leopard mac to broadcast it's services to give the effect of still being awake while it's actually sleeping, and then the BaseStation (must be apple) will send it's own version of a magic packet. This is a pretty cool feature, but is not at all nescesary to wake your mac from sleep. All you need is a Static ip or dyndns.com accnt and a router to forward the magic packet and a software to generate the packet.

If you were running an all Apple household, it would work. When the computer goes into sleep mode, it alerts an Apple Router (eg Airport extreme), and the Extreme would then send a magic packet before any requests for network access were sent to the computer...